


A Game of Ivory and Aces

by Vera (Vera_DragonMuse)



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Gen, games of fate, holding up the world, played methodical and loose, two pillars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-17
Updated: 2013-06-17
Packaged: 2017-12-15 07:49:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/847088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vera_DragonMuse/pseuds/Vera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first thing they have in common is that they don't believe in fate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Game of Ivory and Aces

Imagine a table before a stone fireplace beside a river that overflows its banks. Imagine two high backed chairs and two people to fill them. They are nearly identical these two, lean and forgettable. On the table lies (no, not lies, too active for sleep, too full of dreams to wake) a game. Half chess, half poker and neither at once. The pieces sometimes move under their own accord sometimes with a nudge from long fingers. Theses two have played this game many times. They know each other’s moves and the quicksilver changeability of strategy. They know and yet they don’t, wiped clean from every encounter.  
  
Imagine that a piece of carved alabaster lies on its side. The lamb bleeds across board, it's carved ivory pelt gone sticky and rotten. Imagine a stag, horns lowered pushed with the slightest touch of a fingernail. The gesture small, but the impact rippling across the game. 

"You're losing." Says one to the other.

"You have the advantage." The other agrees. "But the game is far from over." 

Can you imagine it? Picture it whisper clear in your mind’s eye. That delicate false organ. 

It is a lie of course. The board, the pieces, the people. We’ve barely begun and I’m already spreading lies. But I must because lies are the only way to explain. These two, who may be one or none at all, they’re playing a game that’s larger than us all. They play it over and over, round after round and our fragile skins shudder under it’s force. 

One checks. One mates. One taps a finger. One whistles a long note.

The lamb has been sacrificed. The stag stands exposed in a vast wood. 

Only they know if the game draws to a close or only just begins. 

.....

"Though I wander weak and weary." Hannibal poured red wine from carafe to bulbous glass.

"Is it a midnight dreary already?" Will wiped the sweat from his brow with a crumpled tissue.

"Soon." The wine slanted up the glass, too much, the sweetness of intoxication one more sip away. “When you were a child, did you listen to church bells? They call across the city on clear nights like this.” 

“Sometimes.” Will allowed. “Depended on where my bedroom was. If I was awake.” 

“What did they sound like?” 

“Lonely.” He rotated the stem of his glass slowly, watched the thin skin of molecules break and reform. 

.....

They meet like clandestine lovers. Late night trysts and early morning meetings on the side of the road. Instead of sharing a rushed fleshy nudity, they share the dark rot of the heart. They stand, slick and pressed, soft and rumpled. If they lay in a bed, it would have been a tornado of sheets, torn asunder. Instead, they are two pillars in a lonely field paying homage to the art of cruelty. 

.....

“How did you think it would end?” 

A glass wall stands between them, too flimsy and yet too thick. Their breath fogs, dissipates, fogs again. Two chairs sit forgotten behind them. 

“I imagined it would be more satisfying.” The slightest of smiles, barely more than twitch. “I imagined we would be on opposites sides of the glass.” 

“Or in graves.” 

“Just so.” 

They both have documented desires, tucked in lawyers’ drawers and sealed. Will laid to rest, organs donated, buried in the frozen earth. Hannibal burned down to ash and spread on the sea air. That’s what they wish for anyway. Their hopes concealed in manila envelopes waiting for dispassionate hands to slice them open. 

.....

Before the fever, before Abagail sprang fully formed as if from Zeus’ sickened brain, before the particulars of a dozen deaths...just Before. 

“Come in.” 

Will entered the space, cathedral tall and in a church’s silence. He took to the ladder immediately, asking permission with only the barest glance over his shoulder. The books beckoned him upward, away. He stood in the narrow space, comforted by leather bindings and library scented dust. 

“Are these all psychology texts?” He ran his finger over the spines, some broken with too many readings and others too stiff with neglect. His own paperbacks in piles at home grow tender and collapse into a waterfall of smudged ink. 

“Most of them.” Hannibal stood at his desk, head inclined a bare fraction upwards in allowance. Humoring Will, maybe humoring them both. 

A row of binders marked with colored stickers and carefully scripted years. Notes perhaps. Will turned, both hands on the railing as if he might get swept overboard. He could still make out the individual hairs in the crisp wave of Hannibal’s hair. 

“I read somewhere that Destiny carries a book with all of the world written in it.” 

“And what does he do with it?” 

“I don’t know.” Will shrugged faintly. “He’s blind.” 

“Do you believe in fate?” 

“No.” He curled his fingers around his elbows, folding himself in incrementally more tightly. 

“Nor do I.” 

It’s the first thing they have in common. 

.....

“Your move.” 

“I am aware.” 

Imagine a fire crackling, a river roaring and all of creation waits in the sweet pause between inhalation and exhalation. 

.....

Once they watched the sunrise through Will’s curtains and that very evening watched it set through Hannibal’s. The quality of light, the way it fell was utterly different. Yet it fell on the same two faces. 

At noon they were both with Abigail in the garden, the smooth symmetrical nature of it lost to both of them. Will because his attention had long ago been taken by too many other details to marvel over such things. Hannibal because he was using all of his other senses instead. Listening. Tasting. Scenting. Time fell to the wayside. 

In the morning, they spoke about Will’s dreams the night before (fractured, confused, ominous), at noon they discuss colleges (far away, under another name, another face perhaps) and that evening, Hannibal spoke of music (classical, rising upwards, played on a turntable). 

The light eavesdropped on them from grey dawn to purple dusk. It fell over their pale skin, clutched at their covered wrists, the backs of their exposed necks. It listened. It touched. They carried on, oblivious. 

.....

He looked it up once, an idle tapping on a laptop. A rare pause without other clutter. 

Her name has two meanings. 

‘Father of Exaltation’ 

‘God of Joy’ 

Why a girl’s name should mean father, he couldn’t fathom. 

It’s a happy name. 

“I’m fine.” She smiled in a thin line. 

She was many things. Long hair, dark eyes, pale skin and radiating vulnerable youth. 

She was many things. Joyful wasn’t among them. 

She was exalted though. He exalted her in his own way, Hannibal in his. They put her on their pedestals, warm and dry and safe as houses. Safe as cabins crumbling with their secrets in the woods. 

.....

The deer loses an ivory feather. The lamb ceases to bleed. 

“Ah. I see your strategy now.” Says one. 

“Do you?” Says the other. 

“Perhaps not.” 

A shrike cries. A keyboard rattles. 

“Really, my dear.” 

“It’s not against the rules.” 

.....

He stood in the field, the house ablaze with light behind him. 

He stood in the office, the snow alabaster before him.

These two pillars, they held up the world and they didn’t know it. 

If Will knew, he would weep. 

If Hannibal knew, he would laugh. 

And neither of their reactions would matter worth a damn. 

.....

“I would know you in the dark.” Hannibal told him under the glare of the sun. In the distance, an architecture of bodies collapsed under the weight of their own rot. Badly designed. 

“How?” Will asked though his eyes and stance indicated no interest at all. Everything of him was disappearing into the terrible, beautiful elsewhere. 

“How could I not?” 

Will’s eyelashes collapsed downward, the dark circles beneath them darkening. 

“I can’t even find myself here, in the light.” He muttered though it was possible he was insensible to his own words. 

“I am your guide. I’ll help you.” 

.....

Imagine a fire, a river, a table, a game. Imagine two players just the same. One breaths in and the other takes that breath inward.

They are balanced there, scales that dare not tip. 

They play a game. The pieces sometimes move on their own. Sometimes they are moved. The stakes rise. Our skin trembles. 

It’s a terrible lie. 

But the truth is worse.


End file.
